


Like the Seasons

by play_your_tambourine



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, F/M, How Do I Tag, Infidelity, One Shot, Relationship Issues, this is like half canon??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:28:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27297916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/play_your_tambourine/pseuds/play_your_tambourine
Summary: Persephone and Hades haven't spoken since Eurydice arrived at Hadestown. Naturally, her emergency visit to Persephone is not taken kindly.
Relationships: Eurydice/Orpheus (Hadestown), Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Kudos: 39





	Like the Seasons

**Author's Note:**

> Quick lil thing: This takes place in Hadestown, I imagine after Wall. After that we aren't really following the storyline here oop  
> This is my first time writing Hadestown, so please bear with me- I hope I don't make you suffer

It is no more than thirty degrees outside in October, and Persephone is having sex in hell.

That’s what the mortals say, anyway.

Persephone wouldn’t know what to call the dance her and Hades were doing. It was nothing slow-nothing romantic. Sometimes it felt like nothing at all. Sometimes it felt like part of the game to avoid one another for as long as they could before fate became imminent. And not in the three figures following them kind.

Fate came in the form of put out cigarettes on the balcony and tipped over wine glasses, or dominoes that had long since fallen on the ground neither of them elected to pick up. They pretended as if they were never there: as if there were few left on that table, and the last ones weren’t threatening to be swiped off the table, too.

The Gods were prideful, but these ones were not competitive. No, they were tactful and observant. They noticed when the other brushed by behind them, or when steps were not only quiet but unintentionally so. It had become more habitual as of late. They never spoke of why. They both knew why; it didn’t need to be declared to the ground above or to the shades outside the tower. While the mortals liked to spit and sneer at their dying crops those below simply turned a blind eye when they saw one of their rulers approaching the other.

Persephone could not blame them, of course. It’d be cruel to do so. Cruel to assume those above were ungrateful. Cruel to assume they never looked inside themselves and wondered if maybe they watered the plants a bit more, gave them more sunlight they’d-

The woman downed a shot.

Were they always like this?

She felt a hand on her shoulder and knew immediately who it was. Hades wouldn’t have touched her by choice. Still she curled her lips into a snarl like he had and Hermes slowly retracted his hand. Still, his presence lingered her.

“The girl would like to speak with you,” Hermes and Persephone may have been close, but he knew not to say her name.

“That’s a shame,” it was in one sentence-three words-that Hermes knew what Hades had done was getting dangerously close to irreparable. Her words bubbled out of her mouth like she only half meant them to be audible, ducking her head down. Fingers curled tightly around her glass, nails scraping against it in a way that was so ugly it would’ve made the mortals cry.

Hermes didn’t try to take the glass away. Persephone could be a rose, but one with thorns that trailed blood down fingers and into the ground. How deep they’d cut was a matter of how carefully he worded his next declaration.

"The girl  _ needs  _ to speak with you,”

Persephone paused. She tilted her head, didn’t pour another drink, but did not respond. Her eyes danced over the desk she was seated at. One that formerly belonged to Hades, but had since been taken over. It was for no practical purpose other than the small satisfaction she got out of the fact he would no longer use it when she was in the room. She liked to escape from him as much as he liked to avoid her, and thus the arrangement brought her a small piece of contentment she was otherwise lacking in Hadestown.

“Why is that?” The goddess responded tersely. Hermes was forced to pause; he didn’t expect her response to lack venom. She liked to weave it into her words after enough absinthe. Hermes simply assumed she was there; she was not the drunk Lady of the Underground the workers snuck behind caves and conveyorbelts to see. But she was not a seething queen, and there was only one option left. Nearly sober.

Hermes had more hope than he walked in with.

“Well, sister, speaking to her will not hurt,”

“She must be glad I am who I am or she’d be hurting my liver,” With a drawn out groan, her free hand grabbed the bottle by the neck and tipped it into her glass. In one strong motion, she pushed the chair out, nearly laying Hermes out in the process and began walking towards the door.

“She didn’t know any better,” Hermes reminded her warily, ready to catch her fall out of habit as she reached for the door.

Persephone’s hand lingered on the doorknob but she flinched as if his words had been a hand coming across her face. She turned her head to the side, grimacing. It took her a moment. A moment to decide if it was worth it to put a name and face to the girl that destroyed the immortal. She knew it, yet had spent such a long time trying to rid this girl from her memory. One girl she knew didn’t know any better in that moment who had turned thousands of years into a joke. Persephone couldn’t decide what was worse: knowing this girl and never being able to forget her, or never being able to forget Hades had done this enough times to know what would happen.

Persephone kicked the door the rest of the way open and moved down the hall.

\--

Eurydice was a small, pathetic thing, she mused as brown eyes the color of the soil she used to kneel on wandered over her. Little muscle to her, all bones: she wondered if he’d already began trying to put her to work. Surely she would have collapsed had he tried. Persephone tried to make herself feel pity, but all that bloomed in her chest was frost.

“Miss Persephone.” First strike. The movement was subtle, but Eurydice could see her fingers threatening to break the glass she was holding. Her lips were parted slightly; she had already stepped wrong and didn’t know how.

“Mrs. Persephone,” Persephone was not the same below ground as she was above. Persephone below was not the same as the workers said she was. Lady of the Underground lived up to her name, because within an introduction of her name, Eurydice was pretty sure she’d just been killed. “You know who my husband is,” Her voice dripped in contempt, letting go of her glass to claw into the edges of the desk where she gripped it.

“Mrs. Persephone I have a fiancé,” She rushed out as if not saying the words fast enough would kill her. Fortunately, the girl did not look as afraid as she sounded; up on top, she was always on the defensive. And here she was, looking this woman who had partially caused it dead in the eyes. “I don’t want to forget him,” She was staring the bringer of death square in the face, and one of them didn’t have patience to spare.

“That isn’t something I control,” Persephone’s voice was as cold as her heart, having frozen over the moment the first domino wasn’t picked up.

“You were not like this when I first met you,”

“I beg your pardon?” Strike two.

“I-” Eurydice did not like this version of Persephone. She wished for the woman in green who’d pushed her to dance and smelled of honey-sweet wine and a good time. Now the lights were harsh against the woman’s face, natural glow left on the train.

“Things change when they’ve fallen for the unfaithful,” A solemn moment. “But you wouldn’t know a thing about that, would you?”

“He said you always thought love ran the world,” Persephone knew which ‘he’ Eurydice was speaking about; even if she hadn’t, the language gave enough context clues. She and Hades hadn’t spoken of love since this the age before these humans were born.

“If it did, the world would have stopped already,”

“That isn’t true,” That should have been strike three. “Love is still here,”

It should have angered Persephone that the woman had been so bold in front of a Goddess. It should have enraged her that this scrawny mortal who had capsized her marriage said she wrong. Somehow, however, it only made a smile spread onto her lips. It was no teeth, and squinted eyes, but it was wise. Knowing. “Perhaps it isn’t,”

Persephone could not be mad at Eurydice for being right.

Nothing would have made Persephone happier than to disagree. She wanted someone to argue with, to yell at, but doing so to a mere mortal felt low. Lower than she was willing to go, really. She was already stuck in the underground; her shoes did not need to sink deeper. Guilt covered her hands and clouded her conscience, but she was no savage like relatives of hers. A little more drunk than she was going into this discussion, yes, but Persephone and Hades were not the same. She would not toy with the thing for amusement, no matter how much she fantasized about the unfortunate fate she could offer to this girl who’d taken her husband away. She’d thought about some truly retched things at the start. Using the powerlines, letting Cerberus go, putting her in one of the mine shafts long since shut down for infrastructure problems…

Staring at this girl with more optimism than herself and Hades had combined made Persephone wonder what he’d said to her to get her underground. She never asked. She never let Hades try. “Eurydice,” Her voice was still cold, but it surprised the new worker. The smaller of the two sat up a bit straighter, eyes wide but expectant. “What did my husband promise you?” 

The laughter she received was uneasy. “Well, I…”

“Eurydice.” Her voice was like soil through a shovel, spilling but soothing all the same. A small raggedness, but in a way that felt like home. Eurydice shuddered. “Speak now if you wish to get a message through about your fiancé,”

“Food,” The girl blurted out. “Shelter,” Persephone nodded, waiting for the rest. There wasn’t any more. Dirtied hands now laid on the table. She didn’t dare get too close. “Please, make sure I don’t forget him,”

Persephone sighed, gazing over Eurydice’s shoulder, pushing her lips to one side of her face. Her fingers loosened to a tapping. Eurydice was about to prompt the Goddess again but stopped. Eyes frantically ran over her, trying to find what Persephone was contemplating.

“What was his name?”

Eurydice blinked at her, trying to formulate a response. She squeaked more than cried at the realization she may not have known the answer. Eurydice mourned the woman she used to be. She mourned her memories and her fate as they slipped through her fingers and into whatever machinery would soon be below them. Tears spilled onto oak and the feeling was unfamiliar; she wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t cry above in years or if it was because she no longer knew the sensation. Through blurry vision, she saw the whirl of black grow taller, rhinestones shimmering small patterns of light against the wall. A hand laid on her shoulder.

“Orpheus,” Persephone smiled softly, eyes on the unopened case of dominoes on the top shelf. “His name is Orpheus,”


End file.
